Monday, January 16, 2012

Socky New Year

Not a resolution, exactly, but when trawling the stash recently, I was fairly appalled at the quantity of sock yarn present for which I have no particular plan. Well. Resolve then formed to dig into it in the coming year and make it into some socks. Socks for me, as few in my family would really appreciate handknit socks or take care of them properly. And I need some new socks.

Here's what I've got so far:


All are from generic sock ideas in my head, aided by Wendy's Socks from the Toe Up, where I learned Judy's Magic Caston and the short row heel.

The blue ones are 2 x 2 rib cuffs, top down, Dream in Color Starry, a color called Midnight DerbyVF480, so old that they may not make it any more. Love the glints from the silver fiber.

The red ones are some anonymous ball that had started out to be a pair of gloves, but I frogged them and made my first pair of toe-up socks with short-row heels.

Then I started toe-up on the gold-black-and-white ones, Opal 187 (probably no longer produced) which in the ball seemed like they would look leopardy. They didn't, but I got a brainstorm about making them match by knitting the second one top-down, so I could start at the same place in the color repeat on #2 where the top of #1 had ended. It sort of worked, at least for the part that will show above the shoe. Then things started to drift, so that the toes are very different, but, still, it was a fun experiment. Oh yeah, and I threw in a few beads at the tops just because I had them and thought they would look cool. They do, don't they?

The pair still in progress are Blue Moon Fibers Socks That Rock Lightweight, in Sweet Pea. Top down with a crazy mess o' beads mingled in with some cables.  The color looks like cream until you big the picture up, at which point they look a little dirty. In person they look stained with a bit of pea soup. It has been interesting knitting these, because I can only see the color in natural daylight, so it's always a surprise to see what last night's knitting looks like after the sun comes up. I'm not at all a fan of this colorway and am very glad to be distracted by the shiny beads.

This is so satisfying and so much fun that it may be hard to get back to making Big Stuff!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Catching Up

It's been a long time, I know. Sorry, sorry, sorry, possums. Christmas knitting has come and gone, scarves and mitts and bottle covers made, given, received, and nary a picture to show for it. Onward and upward with the new year.

One gift I do have to show you was made from this, a skein of sock yarn in a colorway called Ireland:

An entire country in a skein of yarn--green green grass, grey clouds and rain, blue sky and sea. And it was made into a scarf/shawlette for a frequent traveler to that green and blue and grey land, Trillian, finished off with raindrop beads on the edge.